Dalai Lama Blesses IPO

(San Francisco, California) Salesforce.com has announced that their controversial accounting practices have now been blessed by the Dalai Lama, smoothing the path towards an upcoming IPO. Salesforce.com is one of the most anticipated IPOs in Silicon Valley, considered second in importance only to Google. "Google's got nothing on me," said Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff dismissed rumors that the Vatican was going to bless Google's new email system. "Let's face it," he said, "Christianity is on the downswing and I'm way taller than Eric Schmidt anyways."

Benioff founded Salesforce.com in 1999 after 13 years with Oracle starting as a summer intern washing Larry Ellison's car and eventually becoming Vice President of Aircraft Maintenance. "He personally made sure that Larry's jets were spotless," said former Oracle COO Ray Lane, now a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caustic & Bitter. "I always knew when we gave him a mop and a bottle of Windex he would achieve greatness."

Benioff has managed to grow Salesforce.com to be the most prominent of a new generation of companies offering hosted software that customers subscribe to on a monthly basis. Benioff, who is a devout yoga-practicing budhist-meditating vegetarian Republican surfer, insists he's no flake. "For me, this is more important than just another religious cult. It's a fantastic business model, too."

Mixed Blessing

Benioff's firm has been in the spotlight before, sometimes inviting controversy. In September 2003, Benioff publicly apologized to the Dalai Lama and the American Himalayan Foundation for using the Dalai Lama's image on a promotional poster with the words "Use PeopleSoft and You'll Be Lucky to be Reincarnated as a Dog." But Benioff was repentent and took full responsibility for what he called a lapse in judgement. "I should never have hired those marketing bozos," he said. Benioff apologized to the Dalai Lama and made good on his $100,000 pledge to the American Himalayan Foundation. "This time he actually sent the check in," said a spokesman for the foundation.

Benioff also contacted all of those who recieved the offending poster and asked them to return it. "We had the Dalai Lama autograph them and sold them on eBay, splitting the profits," Benioff said. Benioff also managed to get the Dalai Lama to convert from PeopleSoft's Religion Management System to the upcoming Salesforce.com Spring 2004 Enlightenment Edition. "He's a business man, after all, and a little stock goes a long way," Benioff said. "He's not as tall as I am, but I can learn a lot from him also."

About the authorSidd Finch is an industry reporter who prays he can keep it together until retirement.